The Mars Society UK AGM and conference took place on 25th August 2012, at the National Space Centre in Leicester. The Mars Society was originally formed in Colorado in 1988, and has had a UK branch since that time. In recent years the society has been restructured, and the new committee look forward to re-establishing the society and extending its membership across the UK.
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| National Space Centre, Leicester |
The AGM re-elected Graham Dale as president, and then noted grateful thanks to Andy Nimmo who was retiring from his many years work as secretary. Paul Clark was elected in his place, and Robert Astbury volunteered to be the new press officer. Jerry Stone has also joined the committee.
Graham Dale made use of the very recent MSL landing and descent videos in talking through the mission and some of the question it hopes to answer. He noted the first results from the Radiation Assessment Detector have already shown a number of Heavy Ion Events on the surface, mostly below the average levels seen in the cruise stage.
Jerry Stone talked about the ESA Aurora programme to support Mars exploration and described his contributions in publicising this and encouraging people to write to their MPs, to ensure the UK continues to maintain its position within the Aurora programme.
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| Jerry Stone |
A video showing the Mars One plan to establish a settlement on Mars in 2023 was shown, where settlers will plan to live for the rest of their lives. Living units, life support and rovers would be sent in 2020 to prepare for human arrival.
Ed Buckley presented what we know about Mars, mentioning how the water on Mars is “in prison, not gone”, locked up in ice both on and under the surface. He mentioned how the caves are thought to have more stable temperatures, which would be more conducive for human exploration, and referenced the OEWF (Austrian Space Forum) Mars analog missions, performing experiments in the Dachstein caves in April 2012. Another OEWF Mars analog mission is planned in Morocco for February 2013.
The feasibility of sending cubesat missions to Mars was discussed by Graham Dale, who focussed on ion electrospray microthrusters as a possible solution to the problem of propulsion. The rapid progress of projects such as UKube-1, ExoplanetSat, and KickSat were noted, along with the first iCubeSat 2012 Interplanetary CubeSat Conference which recently took place.
 |
| Graham Dale |
A video was shown, with extracts from Dr Alex Kumar’s Skype conversation with the Mars Society Convention in Pasadena from 5th August, giving interesting insights into the research taking place at the Concordia station, Antarctica. Experiments into pre and post exercise results, blood sampling, circadian rhythmns, psychological effects, gene interaction and changes are being monitored in this isolated environment, where the darkness of winter lasts 3 months. He maintains a website and blog.
Graham Dale mentioned studies for “Building Martian Nation”, which discussed ideas such as a Martian space elevator and the supply of volatiles from Mars to the Moon, as this would be easier than supplying the Moon from Earth, given the delta v requirements.
 |
| Susanne Schwenzer, John Bridges (on screen) |
Dr Susanne Schwenzer, from the Open University, gave us further information about the MSL mission, as she works with John Bridges, from University of Leicester, who is currently at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She narrated the high resolution video taken of the descent from MARDI (Mars Descent Imager), and showed the parachute phase images captured by the HiRise camera on board the Mars Reconaissance Orbiter, which only had a 40% change of being captured, so the mission has done a great job at beating the odds so far.
She described all the instruments, giving extra detail about the first Chemcam laser experiment and touched briefly on the only known problem so far, of one of the wind measuring arms not working. This video shows the planned simulated first movements of Curiosity on Mars.
She presented what the scientific literature knows so far about Gale Crater, listing the many questions that MSL Curiosity hopes to answer, in order to address the main mission goals, of whether Mars could ever have supported life and studying the climate and geology of Mars.
Andy Nimmo talked briefly on current plans for Mars exploration, including the recently announced NASA Discovery mission, InSight, which hopes to see to the centre of Mars and how deeply the crust extends as well as the size of the core. Venezuela has announced that they will go to Mars, and India also announced plans, with a provisional launch in Nov 2013. NASA’s Maven mission is due for launch in 2013, while a Dutch group announced Mars One, involving one way trips to Mars from 2023,with a worldwide lottery.
 |
| Alan Bond |
Alan Bond from Reaction Engines finished the day by telling us about Project Troy, a strategy for a mission to Mars which would involve reusable and economically sustainable space transportation. Both an un-crewed precursor phase and principal phase will deploy 3 vessels, with 6 members per crewed vessel and they will establish three bases which will contain a habitat, nuclear power supply & propellant factory, and storage module. The full Project Troy study documentation is on the Reaction Engines website here and there is also an animation video.
 |
| Alan Bond, mentioning Skylon |
Graham Dale thanked everyone for attending and advised everyone to watch the website and Facebook page for future news and events.
Further information:
A Storify of Tweets from the conferenceThe Mars Society UK AGM and conference took place on 25th August 2012, at the National Space Centre in Leicester. The Mars Society was originally formed in Colorado in 1988, and has had a UK branch since that time. In recent years the society has been restructured, and the new committee look forward to re-establishing the society and extending its membership across the UK.
|
| National Space Centre, Leicester |
The AGM re-elected Graham Dale as president, and then noted
grateful thanks to Andy Nimmo who was retiring from his many years work as
secretary. Paul Clark was elected in his place, and Robert Astbury volunteered
to be the new press officer. Jerry Stone
has also joined the committee.
Graham Dale made use of the very recent MSL landing and descent videos in talking through the mission and some of the question it hopes to answer. He noted the first results from the Radiation Assessment Detector have already shown a number of Heavy Ion Events on the surface, mostly below the average levels seen in the cruise stage.
Jerry Stone talked about the ESA Aurora programme to support
Mars exploration and described his contributions in publicising this and
encouraging people to write to their MPs,
to ensure the UK continues to maintain its position within the Aurora
programme.
|
| Jerry Stone |
A video showing the Mars One
plan to establish a settlement on Mars in 2023 was shown, where settlers will
plan to live for the rest of their lives. Living units, life support and rovers
would be sent in 2020 to prepare for human arrival.
Ed Buckley presented what we know about Mars, mentioning how
the water on Mars is “in prison, not gone”, locked up in ice both on and under
the surface. He mentioned how the caves are thought to have more stable
temperatures, which would be more conducive for human exploration, and
referenced the OEWF (Austrian Space Forum) Mars analog missions, performing experiments
in the Dachstein caves in April 2012. Another OEWF Mars analog mission is planned
in Morocco for February 2013.
The feasibility of sending cubesat missions to Mars was
discussed by Graham Dale, who focussed on ion electrospray microthrusters as a
possible solution to the problem of propulsion. The rapid progress of projects
such as UKube-1,
ExoplanetSat, and
KickSat
were noted, along with the first iCubeSat
2012 Interplanetary CubeSat Conference which recently took place.
|
| Graham Dale |
A video was shown, with extracts from Dr Alex Kumar’s Skype conversation with the
Mars Society Convention in Pasadena from 5th August, giving
interesting insights into the research taking place at the Concordia station,
Antarctica. Experiments into pre and post exercise results, blood sampling,
circadian rhythmns, psychological effects, gene interaction and changes are
being monitored in this isolated environment, where the darkness of winter
lasts 3 months. He maintains a website and blog.
Graham Dale mentioned studies for “Building Martian Nation”,
which discussed ideas such as a Martian space elevator and the supply of
volatiles from Mars to the Moon, as this would be easier than supplying the
Moon from Earth, given the delta v requirements.
|
| Susanne Schwenzer, John Bridges (on screen) |
Dr Susanne Schwenzer, from the Open University, gave us
further information about the MSL mission, as she works with John Bridges, from
University of Leicester, who is currently at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
She narrated the high resolution video taken of the
descent from MARDI (Mars Descent Imager), and showed the parachute phase images
captured by the HiRise camera on board the Mars Reconaissance Orbiter, which
only had a 40% change of being captured, so the mission has done a great job at
beating the odds so far.
She described all the instruments, giving extra detail
about the first Chemcam laser experiment and touched briefly on the only known
problem so far, of one of the wind measuring arms not working. This video
shows the planned simulated first movements of Curiosity on Mars.
She presented what the scientific literature knows so far
about Gale Crater, listing the many questions that MSL Curiosity hopes to answer,
in order to address the main mission goals, of whether Mars could ever have
supported life and studying the climate and geology of Mars.
Andy Nimmo talked briefly on current plans for Mars
exploration, including the recently announced NASA Discovery mission, InSight, which hopes to see to the
centre of Mars and how deeply the crust extends as well as the size of the
core. Venezuela has announced that they will go to Mars, and India also
announced plans, with a provisional launch in Nov 2013. NASA’s Maven mission is
due for launch in 2013, while a Dutch group announced Mars One, involving one
way trips to Mars from 2023,with a worldwide lottery.
|
| Alan Bond |
Alan Bond from Reaction
Engines finished the day by telling us about Project Troy, a strategy for a
mission to Mars which would involve reusable and economically sustainable space
transportation. Both an un-crewed precursor phase and principal phase will
deploy 3 vessels, with 6 members per crewed vessel and they will establish
three bases which will contain a habitat, nuclear power supply & propellant
factory, and storage module. The full Project Troy study documentation is on the Reaction Engines website here
and there is also an animation video.
|
| Alan Bond, mentioning Skylon |
Graham Dale thanked everyone for attending and advised
everyone to watch the website and Facebook page for
future news and events.
Further information:
A Storify of Tweets from the conference
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